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New Zealand Should Outgrow Smugness

New Zealand has sometimes had an international influence quite out of proportion to its size. The first country to give the vote to women, at present it has the distinction of having all three top public posts occupied by women — the governor general, the prime minister andthe chief justice.

Prime Minister Helen Clark, in Japan recently on an official visit, remarked that New Zealand was affordable, hospitable, safe and sophisticated — a good place for Japanese to visit or send their children for education. New Zealand is also beautiful, environmentally conscious and socially progressive.

Its governments have been cultivating Asia-literacy. The impetus for this is economic. The Asian tigers grew three times as fast as the mature industrial economies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. The 1997 financial crisis is likely to be no more than a temporary setback. Rising living standards in Asia will lift New Zealand's growth prospects in their wake.

The Asian economies, led by China and India, continue to have the greatest future growth prospects. Through the combination of expanding populations and rising disposable incomes, the region is likely to be the world's fastest growing consumer market. As in the West, an expanding middle class will demand better services in health and education and will travel overseas more frequently.

All societies are burdened with historical baggage. In New Zealand the old stereotypes about Asia's political backwardness and economic poverty have yet to be replaced by a general appreciation of the region's adaptability, dynamism and diversity. Countries that were formerly aid recipients are now major trading partners and sources of investment, technology and tourists.

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Too many New Zealanders are still too smug about their relative superiority. There is no objective basis for their smugness. In terms of purchasing power parity, New Zealand's gross domestic product per capita is now less than half that of Singapore's.

Asians can feel the sting of exclusion, of not belonging, in New Zealand. The official policy of engagement with Asia still needs to be translated more effectively in the attitudes of New Zealanders.

The writer, vice rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo and a former director of Asian studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand, contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

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A version of this article appears in print on May 17, 2001, in The International Herald Tribune. Today's Paper|Subscribe